Ban limiting asylum restrictions to 2 states could be...

1of6Protestors hold signs that read " Asylum is a Right" outside of the San Francisco Federal Courthouse on Wednesday, July 24, 2019 in San Francisco, Calif. A federal judge said Wednesday that the Trump administration can enforce its new restrictions on asylum for people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border while lawsuits challenging the policy play out. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)Photo: Haven Daley / Associated Press

2of6Asylum hopefuls head home to Central America from Mexico. One judge looks ready to rule against U.S. asylum restrictions.Photo: Christian Chavez / Associated Press

3of6Honduran asylum seeker Sandra Galeano discusses her ordeal after U.S. officials returned her to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.Photo: Jerry Lara

4of6A Border Patrol agent in Hidalgo County,Texas, talks with Central American migrants who under Trump administration rules have to seek asylum elsewhere before being considered for asylum in the United States. A federal judge appears poised to reinstate his order against that policy.Photo: Jerry Lara

5of6Migrant children sleep on a mattress on the floor of a migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. A U.S. judge indicates that he will reissue his nationwide ruling against Trump administration policies that bar virtually all Central Americans from seeking asylum in the United States.Photo: Marco Ugarte / Associated Press

6of6U.S. Border Patrol agents offer water to migrants captured trying to enter the U.S. at Hidalgo, Texas, in July. U.S. District Judge John Tigar appears poised to reinstate his nationwide injunction against Trump administration rules banning virtually all Central Americans from seeking asylum in the United States, an injunction now in effect only at the southern borders of California and Arizona.Photo: Jerry Lara

A Bay Area federal judge indicated Thursday he’s likely to reinstate his nationwide injunction against Trump administration rules banning virtually all Central Americans from seeking asylum in the United States, an injunction now in effect only at the southern borders of California and Arizona.

The administration’s policy denies asylum to anyone who has passed through another country on the way to the United States without seeking asylum there, effectively excluding most applicants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar blocked the policy July 24, eight days after it took effect, saying it contradicted long-standing immigration laws allowing people fleeing persecution in their homelands to seek U.S. refuge regardless of the route they traveled.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the government’s request to dissolve Tigar’s injunction on Aug. 16 but ruled 2-1 that the judge had not shown the need for a nationwide order, and narrowed its scope to the nine states of the Ninth Circuit. Those include the border states of California and Arizona, but not Texas or New Mexico, entry sites for large numbers of undocumented Central Americans.

The Trump administration has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the rest of the injunction while the case proceeds in lower courts. Meanwhile, immigrant advocates offered additional evidence that they said shows the need for a nationwide order, and Tigar seemed receptive Thursday at a hearing in his Oakland courtroom.

In the July 24 injunction, “I really did not go through a lot of effort to explain why, in this case, a nationwide injunction was appropriate,” the judge said. He said the federal appeals court, in upholding his ruling last year against an earlier set of Trump administration asylum restrictions, seemed to assume that immigration rules should be uniform nationwide.

“If I decide to grant this motion” for another nationwide order, Tigar said, “I have some more explaining to do” to the appeals court.

He did not announce a ruling, but showed no sign of backing away from his earlier decision that the administration’s restrictions violated federal law. And when Justice Department attorney Scott Stewart told Tigar he lacked authority to issue a new injunction, the judge disagreed, noting that the appeals court had sent the case back to him to consider any further evidence the advocates offered.

Attorney Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union told Tigar that his clients, groups offering legal aid and other services to asylum seekers, face huge increases in their costs and workload under rules that apply in some states but not others.

Asylum, which allows an immigrant to live and work legally in the U.S. and eventually apply for citizenship, is available to noncitizens who can show a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home countries for reasons such as race, religion, political views or sexual orientation.

Under the new policy, Gelernt told reporters after the hearing, “asylum-seekers are being sent back to grave danger” in their homelands, which have some of the world’s highest homicide rates.

Stewart said the impact of the rules on the support groups was merely “speculative,” and told Tigar that if any judicial intervention was justified, it should be granted only to specific individuals seeking asylum. The judge seemed unconvinced.

“I found in the earlier case,” Tigar said, “that these organizations suffered harm not limited to individual clients.”

Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30 years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then joined The Chronicle in November 2000.

His beat includes state and federal courts in California, the Supreme Court and the State Bar. He has a law degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and is a member of the bar. Coverage has included the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court and her removal by the voters, the death penalty in California and the battles over gay rights and same-sex marriage.